Colorado State is hiring Jim Mora to be the next head football coach in Fort Collins. The news was originally broken by Pete Thamel (ESPN) late on Tuesday night and has since been reported by a variety of national outlets. UCONN has released a statement confirming Mora’s departure as well, though it has not yet been announced by CSU. One would expect that official announcement to happen from the school at some point on Wednesday.
Mora, 64, is a longtime football coach with experience in both the NFL and collegiate ranks. His most recent job of reviving UCONN was quite impressive though. Prior to his arrival, the Huskies had one winning season over an 11-year stretch. What’s more, the Huskies have won nine games just three times ever and two of those seasons occurred under Mora in the last three years. He really elevated that program in a way that was historically unprecedented.
For CSU fans who are exhausted after an embarrassing season of abysmal football, UCONN’s offensive stats this season are a nice site for sore eyes. The Huskies ranked 15th in the FBS in points per game (36.9). QB Joe Fagnano had an especially impressive season, finishing with 3,448 yards, 28 touchdowns and one interception in 12 games. The Huskies had a rusher and receiver produce a 1,000-yard season as well. They were a really dangerous unit and it showed with the way UCONN moved the ball on anybody that they faced.
The Rams needed to make a splash with this move. We’ve said it a million times now but they aren’t making the jump to the Pac-12 with ambitions of just coming along for the ride. CSU is committed to competing at the highest levels and willing to spend what it takes to get that done. We’ll see if they found the right man to finally take advantage of everything the program has to offer. On paper, though, this feels like a win for CSU.
First of all the athletic department deserves a ton of credit for how little information got out during the search process. Nobody locally or nationally was able to report anything of substance, which speaks to how good of a job the administration did keeping things in-house. From somebody who has covered the program for a decade now, that hasn’t always been the case.
Secondly, CSU was able to hire a coach who had quite a bit of P4 buzz after the work he did with UCONN. It would not have been surprising at all to see Mora land an ACC gig, especially if he was willing to wait for this coaching carousel to get even more chaotic in the coming weeks.
The last thing that’s encouraging is unlike the last time the Rams looked to the East Coast, the reaction on that side of the country has been largely been people being disapointed to lose a quality coach. There’s genuine saltiness from the UCONN faithful and that’s always encouraging. Boston College fans basically did a prayer for CSU when the school hired Steve Addazio.
I will go far more in-depth on all of this over the next few days, but I really like this move a lot. It feels like a nice balance of substance and sizzle for a program that desperately needs a spark.